Sooooo Boston marathon 2013

Your signature goes so well with your post. :p

 

http://drudgereport.com/

http://www.bloomberg.com/live-stream/

For those actually interested.

 

Not only is there already a thread for this very reason, but, if I'm honest, I'm a cold hearted bastard, and I don't really care about this. I'm not disrespecting any victims of the attack, nor am I condoning them, but I don't see the point of dancing around and throwing publicity at the event. If anything, it makes it worse; throwing sausages onto the terrorists' BBQ won't make the situation better for us, it will just make their efforts even more effective. Unless it's a Friday, in which case the generic fanatical muslim will just have to stare longingly at the pork tubes gently charring above their specially designed infidel spit roaster.

So, really, it's a terrible thing and such, but I don't see you posting a moment of silence for every bomb that goes off in Afghanistan, or every soldier killed in a different country. What makes this situation any different from all those others?

 

Merged threads as they serve the same purpose, on the same event.

 

I'm pretty sure no wars would be fought if nobody felt like fighting. The whole reason America is getting attacked is because they seem to feel like fighting in most parts of the world.
In fact, for those 30-ish people killed and injured that I've heard about, I'm almost definite that around 6000 innocents are killed and injured in Afghanistan a year. You hear about civilian deaths in war zones occasionally, but currently those places don't matter, it's all about the rare occasion where a few people are hurt closer to home.

Why do you think everyone should know this in particular? Why shouldn't they also know about those people who can't live even slightly normal lives each day, for fear of being killed for looking the wrong way at someone? Are innocent people in the rest of the world somehow less important that Americans?

 

There are obviously many facets to the topic including perpetual sensory overload (where trying to come to grips with the reality of war, day after day, leads to desensitisation & the withdrawal of attention as a mode of self-preservation) & mass media promoting sensationalism, to mention a few, but I suspect a feature that truly renders these bombing different from the events of a war zone (even an unjust war zone-- another topic for anther time) is that the Boston bombings occurred at what is essentially an apolitical, areligious, anationalistic, acultral event.

Basically, unlike practically every war in history, the stage on which these events have been played out isn't 'representative' of anything; it wasn't a 'symbol' of America, or capitalism, or Christianity, or Democracy, or what-have-you-- it was just about running.

Unlike Afghanistan & Iraq (which were/are about regional influence), unlike the Twin Towers (which was about attacking America's self-image), unlike the LDN bombings (which was about attacking America's ally + hurting a symbolic part of Britain's global image [the LDN transit system]), unlike the Bali bombings (which was about attacking the 'decadence' of the West as displayed by holidaying Australians), unlike all the wars & terrorist events (terrorism being 'aggression enacted by individuals' rather than 'war', which is 'aggression enacted by a government') you care to name, this occurred in circumstances that solely pertained to joy & sport, which is about as far removed from hate (and as far removed from a reasonable, 'symbolic' target for hate) as you can get.

All war & hurt is ultimately senseless, but I'd posit that these bombings, targeting what they did, would come pretty close to topping the 'senseless violence' category.

 

Assuming that these bombings were commited by terrorists, as is generally the case with this sort of attack, then that would indicatea political motive, i.e., fuck America (it's a generalised motive, ok?). Any terrorist activity is something I would class as politically motivated. The key element of the target in this case is that it was lots of people all in one place; of course I would plant bombs in a large and previously organised public gathering if I had the intention of killing/maiming people, as opposed to in a random but populated area. That way there is the maximum potential to harm.
In essence, and attack on America doesn't necessarily have to be an attack on any specific image of America, but simply America in itself. The primary motive could well be to harm, rather than to make a statement. Maybe the statement is one of power, if anything, just like any real situation in war is.

 

You have a point, but digging into it deeper I'd suggest that while a generalised motive might work for the bombers it doesn't really help those looking on to assign meaning to the event. We like specific motives, and when there doesn't seem to be any (apart from 'kill lots of people' -- I wouldn't call it 'kill lots of Americans' because if you specifcally wanted to target America then you'd pick something that was, you know, Americany) then people have a lot of trouble dealing with what looks to be, at least on the face of it, random+meaningless violence & hate.

 

I'd probably call American people fairly Americany, personally. :P

On the similar grain, why does it have to be specific just because we like specifics? Lots of things just have general blanket motives; the war on terror, for example. It's not specific to any one thing, it basically just means 'Any means necessary to prevent our dudes from harm', and therefore they stretch their defence halfway across the world, and all but take over countries in their efforts to solve the terrorist threat... against America.

I'm super tired. ;-;

 

Haha. :p Yes, granted, American people are American. But the event picked (and speaking as someone who's married a Bay Stater, there are a lot of events in MA around this time of year that they could have picked) wasn't really American-- as I kinda covered above, it was in most people's minds just a running event that happened to be in America.

Ah, and there you've hit on a classic trait of humanity: the ability to ignore details (or lack thereof) when it suits our purposes. We demand specific reasons when things happen to us "OH GOD WHY MEEEEE?? I DEMAND EXPLICIT REASONS", but we often fail to provide the same level of articulation for our own motives "Grrr, they hurt us! Grrr, let's stop them from doing it again! Grrr, let's beat on their country & kin, 'cos that'll do it!".